Wild Apples
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Henry David Thoreau >> Wild Apples
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Wild Apples.
By Henry David Thoreau
THE HISTORY OF THE APPLE-TREE.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is
connected with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of
the Rosaceae, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and
the Labiatae, or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous
to the appearance of man on the globe.
It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown
primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom
of the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of
Rome, so old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black
and shrivelled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.
Tacitus says of the ancient Germans that they satisfied their hunger
with wild apples, among other things.
Niebuhr [Footnote: A German historical critic of ancient life.]
observes that "the words for a house, a field, a plough, ploughing,
wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to agriculture
and the gentler ways of life, agree in Latin and Greek, while the
Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase are
utterly alien from the Greek." Thus the apple-tree may be considered
a symbol of peace no less than the olive.
The apple was early so important, and so generally distributed, that
its name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in
general. maelon (Melon), in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of
other trees, also a sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in
general.
The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans,
and Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were
tempted by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it,
dragons were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.
[Footnote: The Greek myths especially referred to are The Choice of
Paris and The Apples of the Hesperides.]
The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,
and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings, "As the apple-
tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons."
And again, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." The
noblest part of man's noblest feature is named from this fruit, "the
apple of the eye."
The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw
in the glorious garden of Alcinous "pears and pomegranates and
apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit." And according to Homer, apples
were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind ever
blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and described
the apple-tree as a botanist.
According to the prose Edda, [Footnote: The stories of the early
Scandinavians.] "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods,
when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become
young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in
renovated youth until Ragnarok" (or the destruction of the Gods).
I learn from Loudon [Footnote: An English authority on the culture
of orchards and gardens.] that "the ancient Welsh bards were
rewarded for excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;" and
"in the Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the
clan Lamont."
The apple-tree belongs chiefly to the northern temperate zone.
Loudon says, that "it grows spontaneously in every part of Europe
except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China and
Japan." We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous
in North America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced
into this country by the earliest settlers, and is thought to do as
well or better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the
varieties which are now cultivated were first introduced into
Britain by the Romans.
Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says, "Of trees
there are some which are altogether wild, some more civilized."
Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and, indeed, it is
in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as harmless as
a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks and herds.
It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more
humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no
longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like
the dog and horse and cow; first, perchance, from Greece to Italy,
thence to England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is
still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the
apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his
load. At least a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward
this year than any cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the
Blossom-Week, like the Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the
prairies; for when man migrates he carries with him not only his
birds, quadrupeds, insects, vegetables, and his very sward, but his
orchard also.
The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic
animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought
after by the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to
have existed a natural alliance between these animals and this tree
from the first. "The fruit of the Crab in the forests of France" is
said to be "a great resource for the wild boar."
Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and
quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The tent-
caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was formed,
and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry; and the
canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it. As it
grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many
more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its
boughs, and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever.
It was an era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker
found such a savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in
a ring quite round the tree before be left it,--a thing which he had
never done before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge
long to find out how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she
flew, and still flies, from the wood, to pluck them, much to the
farmer's sorrow. The rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the taste of
its twigs and bark; and when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half-
rolled, half-carried it to his hole; and even the musquash crept up
the bank from the brook at evening, and greedily devoured it, until
he had worn a path in the grass there; and when it was frozen and
thawed, the crow and the jay were glad to taste it occasionally. The
owl crept into the first apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly
hooted with delight, finding it just the place for him; so, settling
down into it, he has remained there ever since.
My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the
seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to
my special province.
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree,
so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is
frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually
handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior
it is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither
colored nor fragrant!
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of
coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with
little ones which fall still-born, as it were,--Nature thus thinning
them for us. The Roman writer Palladius said: "If apples are
inclined to fall before their time, a stone placed in a split root
will retain them." Some such notion, still surviving, may account
for some of the stones which we see placed to be overgrown in the
forks of trees. They have a saying in Suffolk, England,--
"At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core."
Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think
that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth
more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they
sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be
forgotten, along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I
pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of
Pomona, [Footnote: The Roman goddess of fruit and fruit-trees.]--
carrying me forward to those days when they will be collected in
golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.
A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens,
especially in the evenings, you pass through a little region
possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them
without price, and without robbing anybody.
There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and
ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which
cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed
the perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the godlike among men
begin to taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are
only those fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse
palates fail to perceive,--just as we occupy the heaven of the gods
without knowing it. When I see a particularly mean man carrying a
load of fair and fragrant early apples to market, I seem to see a
contest going on between him and his horse, on the one side, and the
apples on the other, and, to my mind, the apples always gain it.
Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all things, and that the
oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load of them. Our driver
begins to lose his load the moment he tries to transport them to
where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most beautiful.
Though he gets out from time to time, and feels of them, and thinks
they are all there, I see the stream of their evanescent and
celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the pulp
and skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but
pomace. Are not these still Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps
the gods forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or
Thjassi carry them off to Jotunheim, [Footnote: Jotunheim (Ye(r)t'-
un-hime) in Scandinavian mythology was the home of the Jotun or
Giants. Loki was a descendant of the gods, and a companion of the
Giants. Thjassi (Tee-assy) was a giant.] while they grow wrinkled
and gray? No, for Ragnarok, or the destruction of the gods, is not
yet.
There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of
August or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls;
and this happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In
some orchards you may see fully three quarters of the whole crop on
the ground, lying in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and
green,--or, if it is a hillside, rolled far down the hill. However,
it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. All the country over,
people are busy picking up the windfalls, and this will make them
cheap for early apple-pies.
In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the
trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of
fruit than I remember to have ever seen before, small yellow apples
hanging over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with
their weight, like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired
a new character. Even the topmost branches, instead of standing
erect, spread and drooped in all directions; and there were so many
poles supporting the lower ones, that they looked like pictures of
banian-trees. As an old English manuscript says, "The mo appelen the
tree bereth the more sche boweth to the folk."
Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or
the swiftest have it. That should be the "going" price of apples.
Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie
under the trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some
choice barrels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many
times before he leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in
my mind, I should say that every one was specked which he had
handled; for he rubs off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal
qualities leave it. Cool evenings prompt the farmers to make haste,
and at length I see only the ladders here and there left leaning
against the trees.
It would be well if we accepted these gifts with more joy and
gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of
compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at
least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular
Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and
their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in
it, and carrying it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple-
trees with much ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next
season." This salutation consists in "throwing some of the cider
about the roots of the tree, placing bits of the toast on the
branches," and then, "encircling one of the best bearing trees in
the orchard, they drink the following toast three several times:--
"'Here's to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, too! Hurra!'"
Also what was called "apple-howling" used to be practised in various
counties of England on New-Year's eve. A troop of boys visited the
different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the
following words:--
"Stand fast, root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bow, apples enow!"
"They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a
cow's horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their
sticks." This is called "wassailing" the trees, and is thought by
some to be "a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona."
Herrick sings,--
"Wassaile the trees that they may beare
You many a plum and many a peare;
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you so give them wassailing."
Our poets have as yet a better right to sing of cider than of wine;
but it behooves them to sing better than English Phillips did, else
they will do no credit to their Muse.
THE WILD APPLE.
So much for the more civilized apple-trees (urbaniores, as Pliny
calls them). I love better to go through the old orchards of
ungrafted apple-trees, at whatever season of the year,--so
irregularly planted: sometimes two trees standing close together;
and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had
grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a
somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to
wander amid them like these. But I now, alas, speak rather from
memory than from any recent experience, such ravages have been made!
Some soils, like a rocky tract called the Easterbrooks Country in my
neighborhood, are so suited to the apple, that it will grow faster
in them without any care, or if only the ground is broken up once a
year, than it will in many places with any amount of care. The
owners of this tract allow that the soil is excellent for fruit, but
they say that it is so rocky that they have not patience to plough
it, and that, together with the distance, is the reason why it is
not cultivated. There are, or were recently, extensive orchards
there standing without order. Nay, they spring up wild and bear well
there in the midst of pines, birches, maples, and oaks. I am often
surprised to see rising amid these trees the rounded tops of apple-
trees glowing with red or yellow fruit, in harmony with the autumnal
tints of the forest.
Going up the side of a cliff about the first of November, I saw a
vigorous young apple-tree, which, planted by birds or cows, had shot
up amid the rocks and open woods there, and had now much fruit on
it, uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were
gathered. It was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it
still, and made an impression of thorniness. The fruit was hard and
green, but looked as if it would be palatable in the winter. Some
was dangling on the twigs, but more half-buried in the wet leaves
under the tree, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The
owner knows nothing of it. The day was not observed when it first
blossomed, nor when it first bore fruit, unless by the chickadee.
There was no dancing on the green beneath it in its honor, and now
there is no hand to pluck its fruit,--which is only gnawed by
squirrels, as I perceive. It has done double duty,--not only borne
this crop, but each twig has grown a foot into the air. And this is
such fruit! bigger than many berries, we must admit, and carried
home will be sound and palatable next spring. What care I for
Iduna's apples so long as I can get these?
When I go by this shrub thus late and hardy, and see its dangling
fruit, I respect the tree, and I am grateful for Nature's bounty,
even though I cannot eat it. Here on this rugged and woody hillside
has grown an apple-tree, not planted by man, no relic of a former
orchard, but a natural growth, like the pines and oaks. Most fruits
which we prize and use depend entirely on our care. Corn and grain,
potatoes, peaches, melons, etc., depend altogether on our planting;
but the apple emulates man's independence and enterprise. It is not
simply carried, as I have said, but, like him, to some extent, it
has migrated to this New World, and is even, here and there, making
its way amid the aboriginal trees; just as the ox and dog and horse
sometimes run wild and maintain themselves.
Even the sourest and crabbedest apple, growing in the most
unfavorable position, suggests such thoughts as these, it is so
noble a fruit.
THE CRAB.
Nevertheless, our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance,
who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into
the woods from the cultivated stock. Wilder still, as I have said,
there grows elsewhere in this country a native and aboriginal Crab-
Apple, "whose nature has not yet been modified by cultivation." It
is found from Western New York to Minnesota and southward. Michaux
[Footnote: Pronounced mee-sho; a French botanist and traveller.]
says that its ordinary height "is fifteen or eighteen feet, but it
is sometimes found twenty-five or thirty feet high," and that the
large ones "exactly resemble the common apple-tree." "The flowers
are white mingled with rose-color, and are collected in corymbs."
They are remarkable for their delicious odor. The fruit, according
to him, is about an inch and a half in diameter, and is intensely
acid. Yet they make fine sweet-meats, and also cider of them. He
concludes, that "if, on being cultivated, it does not yield new and
palatable varieties, it will at least be celebrated for the beauty
of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume."
I never saw the Crab-Apple till May, 1861. I had heard of it through
Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not
treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-
fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a
portion of Pennsylvania, where it was said to grow to perfection. I
thought of sending to a nursery for it, but doubted if they had it,
or would distinguish it from European varieties. At last I had
occasion to go to Minnesota, and on entering Michigan I began to
notice from the cars a tree with handsome rose-colored flowers. At
first I thought it some variety of thorn; but it was not long before
the truth flashed on me, that this was my long-sought Crab-Apple. It
was the prevailing flowering shrub or tree to be seen from the cars
at that season of the year,--about the middle of May. But the cars
never stopped before one, and so I was launched on the bosom of the
Mississippi without having touched one, experiencing the fate of
Tantalus. On arriving at St. Anthony's Falls, I was sorry to be told
that I was too far north for the Crab-Apple. Nevertheless I
succeeded in finding it about eight miles west of the Falls; touched
it and smelled it, and secured a lingering corymb of flowers for my
herbarium. This must have been near its northern limit.
HOW THE WILD APPLE GROWS.
But though these are indigenous, like the Indians, I doubt whether
they are any hardier than those back-woodsmen among the apple-trees,
which, though descended from cultivated stocks, plant themselves in
distant fields and forests, where the soil is favorable to them. I
know of no trees which have more difficulties to contend with, and
which more sturdily resist their foes. These are the ones whose
story we have to tell. It oftentimes reads thus :--
Near the beginning of May, we notice little thickets of apple-trees
just springing up in the pastures where cattle have been,--as the
rocky ones of our Easter-brooks Country, or the top of Nobscot Hill
in Sudbury. One or two of these perhaps survive the drought and
other accidents,--their very birthplace defending them against the
encroaching grass and some other dangers, at first.
In two years' time 't had thus
Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.
But at this tender age
Its sufferings began:
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.
This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but
the next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it,
and express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that
brought you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again,
reflecting, it may be, that he has some title to it.
Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two
short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the
ground in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and
scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal,
stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some
of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have
ever seen, as well, on account of the closeness and stubbornness of
their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple
scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which
you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold
is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they
are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against
such foes. In their thorniness, however, there is no malice, only
some malic acid.
The rocky pastures of the tract I have referred to--for they
maintain their ground best in a rocky field--are thickly sprinkled
with these little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray
mosses or lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just
springing up between them, with the seed still attached to them.
Being regularly clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge
with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form,
from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by
the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs
they make fine dark shadows when the sun is low. They are also an
excellent covert from hawks for many small birds that roost and
build in them. Whole flocks perch in them at night, and I have seen
three robins' nests in one which was six feet in diameter.
No doubt many of these are already old trees, if you reckon from the
day they were planted, but infants still when you consider their
development and the long life before them. I counted the annual
rings of some which were just one foot high, and as wide as high,
and found that they were about twelve years old, but quite sound and
thrifty! They were so low that they were unnoticed by the walker,
while many of their contemporaries from the nurseries were already
bearing considerable crops. But what you gain in time is perhaps in
this case, too, lost in power,--that is, in the vigor of the tree.
This is their pyramidal state.
The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty years or more,
keeping them down and compelling them to spread, until at last they
are so broad that they become their own fence, when some interior
shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward with joy: for it
has not forgotten its high calling, and bears its own peculiar fruit
in triumph.
Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its bovine foes.
Now, if you have watched the progress of a particular shrub, you
will see that it is no longer a simple pyramid or cone, but out of
its apex there rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance
than an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the whole of its
repressed energy to these upright parts. In a short time these
become a small tree, an inverted pyramid resting on the apex of the
other, so that the whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The
spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally disappears, and
the generous tree permits the now harmless cows to come in and stand
in its shade, and rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown
in spite of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, and so
disperse the seed.